She never really had a chance to fall in love with the right person, and maybe she would have if I’d not had the bright idea of sending her to the FBI Academy. If only she’d never stepped foot in Quantico, Virginia. Maybe her first significant relationship wouldn’t have been with someone who seduced her, stole her heart and in some ways her very identity and soul. Maybe Lucy would have felt differently about Janet long ago and also now. I wouldn’t want to be Janet.

I wouldn’t want to be the one who comforted Lucy after Carrie came close to destroying all of us. It’s not a level playing field. It never has been, and Janet’s smart enough to realize there are but a few degrees of separation between murderous hate and erotic love. They are different extremes of the same raging passion, and she evokes neither in Lucy.

Janet is somewhere between the best and the worst of everything when it comes to life with my niece, and I constantly feel bad about it even as I say nothing. It’s not my business. But I worry I’m to blame. Maybe Lucy would have been better off had I not tried to do so much for her, had I not insisted on rescuing her from powerlessness, from loss and every other perceived bogeyman that plagued my childhood.

Maybe Dorothy is right when she says that I’m the one who’s done the real damage to a niece I couldn’t love more were she my own daughter. The irony is that Dorothy doesn’t know about the worst mistake I made. She doesn’t know about Carrie Grethen. My sister could be sitting next to her on the plane and not know who she is or why it matters.

Heading toward the big boxy tent silhouetted against the night, I realized how unsettled I am by Lucy showing up and giving shape and form to her worst fears. I resent walking around in the dark with Carrie on my mind, and I feel myself begin to resist her as I’ve done countless times.

“How are we holding up?” I say to one of the uniformed cops as my sweat-soaked Tyvek-covered feet quietly crunch past on the unpaved path that stretches ahead of me.

“Hanging in.”

“Stay cool,” I say to another officer.

“You too, Chief.”

“If anybody needs any water, let us know,” I offer the next one I encounter.

“Hey, Doc? We got any idea yet what happened to her?”

“That’s where I’m headed,” I reply, and I have a similar exchange with all of them.